The communications industry is rapidly changing to adjust to emerging technologies and ever increasing customer demand. This customer demand for new applications and increased performance of existing applications is driving communications network and system providers to employ networks and systems having greater speed and capacity (e.g., greater bandwidth). In trying to achieve these goals, a common approach taken by many communications providers is to use packet switching technology.
Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is widely deployed and used in local and wide area networks, including the Internet, to communicate information. Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is a version of the Internet Protocol that is designed to succeed IPv4. However, the headers of IPv4 and IPv6 are significantly different; and therefore, these protocols do not interoperate directly.